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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24863776">how to save a life</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TooManyGaysTooLittleTime/pseuds/TooManyGaysTooLittleTime'>TooManyGaysTooLittleTime</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Song of Ice and Fire &amp; Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Hannibal (TV) Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Death, Dark Arya Stark, Dark Daenerys Targaryen, F/F, Massive TW for: blood; death; violence; murder; no cannibalism though, On Hiatus, Probably Abandoned, Psychological Trauma, Psychological issues, Serial Killers, a hannibal-ish au, dany or arya stans dni, no beta we die like robert baratheon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:49:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,305</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24863776</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TooManyGaysTooLittleTime/pseuds/TooManyGaysTooLittleTime</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Daenerys Targaryen: A psychologist and doctor who currently helps the FBI. Haunted by the thoughts of her past and the troubles of the present.</p><p>Arya Stark: Nominally an assistant to the FBI regarding serial killers. Behind closed doors, however, she is hiding dark secrets.</p><p>When a case brings them together, how long will it take before one—or both—of them cracks?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Arya Stark/Daenerys Targaryen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>100</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>hi the concept of daenarya in Hannibal broke into my brain and wouldn’t leave me alone </p><p>also daenarya deserves more fic </p><p>so here you go</p><p>(title from how to save a life by the fray)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>The Lannister Residence, Casterly, 11:32 p.m.</h3><p>Arya walks into the room, quiet as a shadow. And to them, she is a shadow: barely noticed, barely commented on.</p><p>She raises her eyes to the splatter of blood across the floor, and considers the position of the dead man—Tywin Lannister, formerly married to a Joanna Lannister, although Arya dislikes overthinking names and people. It is the methodology of murders that is her speciality, first and foremost.</p><p>Studying the pattern of droplets, Arya lifts her hand to mark out the way that the man had fallen. She backs out of the toilet, working out the mechanics of the murder as she moves away.</p><p>
  <em>There is a gun in a belt. It is slid out, shifted in a shaking hand as footsteps pad through the house. They are scared, although not of being caught. They are scared of something to do with this house.</em>
</p><p>Something to do with who they are going to kill.</p><p>A relation, possibly, whoever they are, <em>they know the place well. Their movements are steady. They make no unnecessary noise, they don’t get turned around. </em></p><p>
  <em>They open the door, seeing the light emanating from underneath it, and they are stopped by something said by the dead man.</em>
</p><p>Arya blinks and comes to. She’s standing in the toilet, across from the dead body slumped down. </p><p>People in white coats push past her, ignoring the woman in a sloppy flannel and jeans to go inspect the body and take samples. While Arya thinks that meaningless—she already knows more about the murderer than any sample could tell her—it wouldn’t do to get on the wrong side of the official forensics. She can’t give them a reason to suspect her.</p><p>Murdered on the toilet. That’s a new one for her. Plenty of toilet humour to be found in that.</p><p>She files it away for later, wondering about the idea. Tugging at the buttons of her flannel, she exits the bathroom and goes back through the house. At the door, she runs into Sandor, her supervisor (officially Agent Clegane, but gods know that Arya has far too much intel on him to really think of him as merely an <em>agent</em>.) His voice is gruff as he holds a notebook out towards her.</p><p>“You got anything for us, longshot?” It’s a nickname that is generally mocking, as Sandor’s nicknames have tended to be. Arya nods and takes the notebook, scribbling words down and looking up to explain them to him, her eyes moving between the paper and his face (scarred over one side by burns which he never discusses.) </p><p>“Killer was probably a family member, or someone he knew well,” Arya says, pen working at the page. “Single shot, in between groin and stomach. Judging by the amount of blood, he was killed in the early evening. This night.”</p><p>“Could still be around, then,” Sandor worries at his lip, one side covered in scars.</p><p>“No, this was a hit-and-run. Opportunistic,” Arya says, thinking back to the location of the murder. “They knew that the victim would be here, but they didn’t know where. Again, family members would know that. But it can’t be a serial killer, ‘cause they would have staked out the place ahead of time.”</p><p>“Since you think it’s a family member so much, I’m putting you in charge of interviewing the members of Lannister’s family you can find.”</p><p>“Of course,” Arya says, glancing down and away from his face to avoid showing her disdain for his constant put-downs. She doesn’t need interviews: her methodology is more on-the-spot, but undeniably more useful than a long list of data from forensics and interviews. </p><p>“I’ll get on it tomorrow, then,” Arya says, turning to walk out of the house and to her car—a cheap  Prius—parked out the front. She slides into the driver’s seat and turns the key in the ignition. </p><p>A smile appears upon her face as she pulls out of the drive and onto the road. </p><p>Murdered on the toilet. What a way to kill someone. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Arya meets Beric Dondarrion and takes up a new case.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I’ve honestly been blown away by the response to the first chapter, so here’s a second.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>FBI Academy, Red Keep, King’s Landing</h3><p>“We’ve all thought of killing someone,” Arya starts, resting her left hand in her right, “whether by our own hands or by God’s.” Her eyes flick from the screen to the rows of students, never quite fixing on either. “What would be your reason for killing Tywin Lannister?” She presses a button and the screen behind her changes to show a close-up shot of the dead man’s head, lying against the wall.</p><p>Personally, Arya has plenty of reasons, but she keeps her silence, leaving the lecture on that question and motioning for the students to clear away. She replaces the device on the lecture stand and stands up the little papers she has to shuffle them into neatness.</p><p>“Arya Stark.”</p><p>Looking up from the lectern, Arya notices a man standing on the other side of it, distance respectful. </p><p>“Beric Dondarrion.” He extends a hand for Arya to shake, but she disregards it, continuing to neaten the papers.</p><p>Dondarrion passes her the pair of thick-rimmed black glasses that rest on the lectern, and Arya takes them, sliding them into place with barely a glance at him.</p><p>“Listen, I need your help.” </p><p>“You’ve got H’ghar and Waif, they both do the same thing I do.” Her tone is noncommittal, bored.</p><p>“Teaching post, huh,” Dondarrion nods at the lecture hall, clearly feigning. Arya narrows her eyes.</p><p>“What do you want?” She frowns, studying him in flickering motions of her eyes.</p><p>“Come with me and I’ll tell you about the case.”</p><p>Arya sets down the folder containing the papers and emerges from behind the lecture stand, shuffling her suit jacket as she does so. </p>
<h3>Beric Dondarrion’s Office, FBI Academy, Red Keep</h3><p>“Eight boys, all disappeared from the same area,” Dondarrion gestures at the board, strings tacked over it to denote locations and movements. He hands Arya a crisp picture and she moves to tack it up, pressing the pin into the cork board firmly.</p><p>She stands back, nibbling on her lip as she examines the board. “They’re all physically similar,” she begins, “similar appearance, dark hair, blue eyes.” Frowning, her eyes skate over each of them in turn.</p><p>“Any of them found?”</p><p>Dondarrion shakes his head mournfully. “We’ve heard nothing about them.”</p><p>Arya walks closer to the board, lets her fingers linger on the lines of the strings. She traces them with light touches, running her hands across them. </p><p>The lines mean nothing, she’s sure of that at least. The similarities between the victims, rather than the minute differences between each of them, are the key to this case.</p><p>“One of them is different. The golden dragon in a pot of fake ones, if you take my metaphor,” Arya says, piercing blue eyes staring at her from the cork board. “It’s not going to be the first one, and it’s not going to be the last one that’s special. One in the middle.”</p><p>Number five, number two, number seven, number four, number six, number three. Arya is sure that one of them means something more to whoever is behind this. </p><p>Random guesses, however, don’t do any good. There is a method to every madness, always a personal vendetta like Arya has or a way to gain something. People don’t kill for nothing, even if what they kill for is trivial and seemingly unimportant sometimes. She knows that fact well, drills it into her head every time she lists the names. </p><p>“We’ll look at the latest victim’s house first,” Arya decides, “a Robert Flowers.” The footsteps will be newer there, easier to track, even though Flowers isn’t the real golden dragon. </p><p>Beric nods shortly, and pulls out his phone. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>this entire fic is just an excuse to watch hannibal again if you haven’t figured that out already</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>They visit the Flowers’s house and Arya discovers something.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>the response to this has continued to astound me</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>The Flowers Residence, Goldengrove, The Reach</h3><p>“Remember, their daughter has been abducted,” Dondarrion hisses under his breath to Arya. “Be kind to them.”</p><p>Arya rolls her eyes after he looks away to knock on the door. Of course she’ll be <em>kind</em>. She has a measure of self-respect despite her reputation as unstable and secretive.</p><p>“Mr. Flowers?” The man at the door is pale despite his warm brown skin and withdrawn, his face framed by black hair that has lost volume and slowly grayed as it aged. He nods at Dondarrion’s voice, opening the door slowly.</p><p>Dondarrion is first in, his presence taking up the entirety of the corridor. Arya slips in behind him, shadowy and small to their eyes: just the way she likes it.</p><p>She lets the other man handle the majority of the conversation, as she finds it difficult to look the victims’ family members in the eye. There is a certain quality to them, like they’re not completely aware that someone they love has died. </p><p>(It is this which helps her pick out the guilty family members: although they pretend at grief, Arya only has to take one look directly into their eyes to know that they don’t mean it, not really.)</p><p>Mr. Flowers leads them to the main room, his steps slow and weighed down by denial and grief. Through the corners of her eyes, Arya has seen that he is mourning, but that he also still thinks that his son will be alive again.</p><p>Although none of the bodies have been found, and the men taken could still be alive, Arya knows internally that they are all dead. </p><p>(It’s not just her education on profiling serial killers, although that plays a part. More than anything else, it’s the speed and number of the abductions. Eight in such a short time period? Whoever they are, they’re not wasting time.)</p><p>Mr. Flowers offers two chairs, and they mutually decide to remain standing. She lets Dondarrion do the questioning for her, get the information that he thinks they need to solve the case.</p><p>(All she needs is a VPN and access to Tor to find the killer, but Arya would never mix her personal and public self like that. It would lead to too many questions.)</p><p>Mr. Flowers has stopped talking, and his wife has started. She’s pretty enough, Arya supposes, lanky red hair that must have been more glorious in her youth falling down to just above her shoulders. Her face is lined with grief, though, and Arya can tell that she’s given up all hope that her son will be found alive again.</p><p>If she were someone else, someone more like her mother, Cat, had been, she might have told Mrs. Flowers that she was sorry.</p><p>Mrs. Flowers is talking about how Robert had disappeared from the house. Arya frowns, listening despite herself. Her gaze catches on an empty food bowl, a cat painted on the side of the porcelain. </p><p>“Your cat,” she interjects. “Did he feed it?” </p><p>Mrs. Flowers seems taken aback by Arya’s observation, and she wraps her hands further around the mug of tea she holds. “Why... yes, I think.”</p><p>Arya swears under her breath, quietly enough that while Dondarrion hears her, the Flowers do not.</p><p>“Sir, madam, I’m going to need to look in your son’s room.” The honorifics are but a cover for the fact that Arya is going to get in that room no matter what.</p><p>Mr. Flowers rises from his chair, expression turning grim and determined. “I’ll show you to it.”</p><p>Arya dislikes the look on his face. She’s encountered his type before: compelled by loss to become cagey and difficult. The lack of respect some have shown is downright rude.</p><p>Still, she follows Mr. Flowers upstairs and down the dark corridor to Robert Flowers’ bedroom. A cat mewls at the closed door. Arya picks it up, gripping above and below its rib cage, which she can feel through the lightly furred coat. </p><p>“I need you to stay outside,” Arya warns the man when he motions to follow her inside. She passes him the cat. “Hold the cat if it’s difficult.”</p><p>Arya opens the door with a creak of complaint from the hinges, closing it behind her. Her methodology is not something that grief-ridden parents will take well to, she senses.</p><p>When she looks back from the door handle, she sees a body lying on the bed. It’s dressed in a long white shirt, two small blossoms of blood upon the chest which must have leaked through the fabric. The eyes are closed purple lids, and the curtains of the room away softly in the wind. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>i’m kinda really hoping this is good enough for the response it’s getting so a review is appreciated :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Arya’s mental state begins to unravel further.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>will i EVER do updates that aren’t short? no</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>The Flowers Residence, Goldengrove, The Reach</h3><p>Arya almost doesn’t dare to touch the body, initially, for it seems so perfect in state. A Sleeping Beauty laid out on the bed, neither dead nor living, but waiting for something, anything. </p><p>The window is open, a breeze floats through the room, running fingers through Arya’s hair and mussing it. Whoever they were, they must have gotten inside via the window: otherwise, Arya is sure that Mr. and Mrs. Flowers would have noticed. She goes there first, stares out the window and down onto the lawn. </p><p>Perfectly kept, once, but becoming overgrown in grief. The long grass neither hides nor shows any footsteps: the space in between the blades is full of darkness, dark as the hair of the body on the bed. </p><p>Arya turns away from the window, lunges for the bed. She straddles the corpse, a corpse no longer, <em>a living human life beneath her finger tips. Hands tighten about his throat, pressing him down as he tries to sit upwards. His attacker pants with the effort, but otherwise no concern mars their eyes. They know how to kill. Their knees dig into the bed beside the body, their weight on his chest in the main. </em></p><p>“Arya?”</p><p>—<em>no not now not now—</em></p><p>“Waif, what are you doing?” Her voice is rough and scratchy from disuse. She rarely talks, and it shows. </p><p>Her colleague still wears a smile on her face, a smile that breaks down doors, opens up the world to her. </p><p>She’s ever so much better at that than Arya, but personally Arya likes to think that she’s better when it comes down to the serious business. </p><p>“Hey, relax. Dondarrion called us—” She gestures at the FBI cars waiting outside—“in after Mr. Flowers reported we’d found a body.”</p><p>There she goes again, all smooth talk and covered edges. Even Arya believes her sometimes when she puts on that facade.</p><p>“You shouldn’t be here,” Arya mutters. The body on the bed is now inextricably linked to her, a relationship more intimate than the body bag he will be taken to the morgue in, more intimate than the doctor who will check over him in his deathly state. Even more intimate, even, than a lover. </p><p>She knows how he looks when he dies, knows how he attempts to struggle upwards and push his assailant off of him. Knows what his life feels like in her hands.</p><p>They will never understand, and if they did, they’d send her away to a psychic hospital. Lock her up and keep her away from the knives and guns forever.</p><p>Arya was made for this. Holding a life in her hands. Following in the footsteps of killers, finding <em>them</em> in their kills.</p><p>She knows that she freaks them out. Knows that there are those who think she’s a killer herself.</p><p>(They’re not wrong, but she would never tell them that.)</p><p>Waif waves a hand in front of her face. “Arya?”</p><p>Arya blinks. “Yeah.” She realised that she must have been going off into her mind in front of Waif, clearly providing a reason for concern. She smiles to cover up: no use solidifying her reputation as cracked in the head when she has a job to do.</p><p>(Truth is, she was cracked in the head long ago, when her father died in front of her. When she saw Robb’s body, riddled by bullet holes, and his dog beside him. When she heard her sister’s scream as she was dragged away.)</p><p>She turns back to the body. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>*waves hand at comments and kudos* y’know, if you want to</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Concerns about Arya becoming too deeply involved in the case cause Beric to suggest counselling and psychological help for Arya—thus bringing in Daenerys Targaryen.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thank you for all your comments and kudos! yall are the best readers ever honestly</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>Beric Dondarrion’s Office, FBI Academy, Red Keep</h3><p>Beric runs a hand through his hair. Sighs heavily. Turns to Stark. </p><p>“You think it’s an apology,” he says. It’s not a question.</p><p>Stark nods. She rarely speaks, Beric has learned, instead choosing silence. It’s unnerving. He could think himself alone and yet look up to see her sitting there. </p><p>“And...” Her silence is infuriating, gives her a way to establish her dominance of the situation. She is always there, hiding behind her lips the solution to the puzzle, but never revealing it.</p><p>“And what,” Stark says, voice cutting through the air. Her tone is critical, judgmental.</p><p>The urge to reflexively yell “I don’t know!” at her strengthens. Beric tamps it down.</p><p>“Who now? Who’s his golden dragon?” Beric taps the photos of every person, blue eyes, brown hair. In their features somewhere there is the link to the golden dragon. He just can’t see it.</p><p>He knows Stark can see it, though. That she weaves together their faces until they are one. She is the key.</p><p>Stark stays unruffled even as Beric becomes more riled. “Who is it?”</p><p>He doesn’t realise that she’s speaking until she clears her throat. “It’s theirs. Whoever the golden dragon is, it’s theirs.”</p><p>She is cryptic, but he is learning to decode her.</p><p>“I’ll tell the team to look at people who fit the profile of the victims.”</p><h3>FBI Academy, Red Keep, King’s Landing</h3><p>Arianne’s black curls are perfectly coiffed, pinned up on one side and cascading down the other. She raises an eyebrow.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Dondarrion, but I’m too close to Miss Stark—friendship wise, of course—for me to be her counsellor. Although, it is a wise decision, of course,” she hurriedly adds, minding not to piss off Dondarrion. “Might I suggest a colleague of mine, Daenerys Targaryen?”</p><p>Dondarrion frowns. “Isn’t Targaryen that one who helps us out? The doctor?”</p><p>“Indeed,” Arianne says, thinking back to the last time that she’d seen her friend. Her disposable gloves had been coated in blood.</p><p>“Well... if you’re <em>sure</em> you won’t take it...”</p><p>“I am not going to violate our friendship.” she says firmly.</p><p>“Targaryen it is, then.”</p><p>Arianne smiles and notes down that she should tell Daenerys to clean the rugs. Possibly even get a new one, if the bloodstains won’t come out of the last. Oh well. It had been ugly anyways.</p><h3>The Office of Daenerys Targaryen, Red Keep, King’s Landing</h3><p>Arya opens the door uncertain of what she will find behind it. Despite her reputation as unstable, a loose cannon, never before has she been offered counselling, psychological help. </p><p>(Arya isn’t sure if she will ever recover from the trauma of her earlier years, but she can try. Can’t she?)</p><p>The office is well-appointed, soft rugs sinking under Arya’s feet, paintings hanging on the walls. Shelves of books in between them. It’s better than some cheap plastic chairs and table, at least. </p><p>Targaryen is in a suit jacket and dress, strong shoulders offset by the curve of her waist. Long blonde, almost white, hair is left long, rather than tied up. When she raises her eyes to Arya’s, she sees that they are purple, the purple of sweetened lies and dying fruits. </p><p>“Take a seat.” She gestures across her desk—large, wooden, polished to a shine—to where a single chair is laid out.</p><p>Arya shakes her head at the offer. “I’d prefer to remain standing.”</p><p>“As you wish.” Targaryen’s tone is carefully neutral. Her shoulders shift underneath the suit jacket as she arranges the files on her desk. She stays standing, clearly wishing to put herself on equal footing with Arya.</p><p>That’s fine. Arya will allow it. </p><p>She doesn’t wait for Arya to spill the secrets of her life before she starts speaking, which Arya appreciates. She gets straight to the point, without any meaningless posturing. This is someone who is confident in their power. </p><p>“Arya Stark, aged twenty-three.” Although it feels only yesterday that Arya was eleven, hands white  as they gripped a gun, shaking as she pulled the trigger and shot that boy in the heart. “No previous convictions, record white as milk. No family written down here. Do you have any relatives, Miss Stark?”</p><p>Arya’s tongue jams up for a moment before she stutters out, “I did. Long time ago. They died. Most of them. I don’t know where some of them are now.”</p><p>She shuts her mouth, sure that she has talked too much, given away her closest secrets. Daenerys simply opens a notebook and writes something down.</p><p>“Continue,” she says congenially, as if she hasn’t made Arya spill her long-kept secrets.</p><p>“I still have thoughts,” Arya blurts out, “sometimes. About them. Their deaths.”</p><p>Ned Stark’s head rolling towards her, cut at the neck, his eyes unseeing. Catelyn Stark’s corpse, grey and decaying, scarred down the cheeks. Robb Stark’s neck stitched onto the head of a wolf, thick surgical stitches binding them together.</p><p>“Breathe.” Daenerys is standing, having pushed away her chair and moving towards Arya. “You’re panicking. This happens sometimes, when relieving a traumatic memory.”</p><p>Arya looks at the swirls of the carpet she’s standing on, notices that there is a three-headed dragon picked out in red thread. She breathes easier after a moment.</p><p>Daenerys sits down, makes another note in her book. “It seems those memories are particularly difficult to think of. We will return to them as you become more used to this.”</p><p>She nods, not trusting herself to speak.</p><p>“A particular concern...” Daenerys’s finger follows a line of writing on her page, nail painted black. The nails of her other hand are painted red, long talons sharp enough to kill, “was that you were getting too invested in the case. I’m going to look at your possible reasons for this.”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>“Firstly, did you know anyone like the victims?”</p><p>“No,” Arya says. And she doesn’t think she knows anyone like the victims. She could, she guesses. Blue eyes and black hair can’t be that uncommon.</p><p>“We can rule that out, then.” There’s scratching as a line is drawn over previously written words. “How about... how do you feel about killings?”</p><p>Arya hesitates to speak. Daenerys (for already she’s started to consider her <em>Daenerys</em> rather than <em>Targaryen</em>) notices this, is getting out a piece of paper and a second pen, readying to pass them to Arya. Arya hisses internally and answers, “Negatively! I hate killings.” A complete lie, such a complete bloody lie. A necessary lie, though.</p><p>She raises her eyebrows, white as her hair, but otherwise writes it down without much comment.</p><p>“And how do you feel about the methods of the murdering?"</p><p>Mounted on stags’ antlers like some kind of gruesome hunting trophy—that much had been evident from the autopsy report. Twisted, but elegant in its own way.</p><p>“The method? I think it’s beautiful. Neatly done, really.”</p><p>“I agree.” She looks up to see Daenerys’s eyes raised from the paper. 
</p>
<p>Daenerys has killed before. That, Arya is suddenly sure of even before she speaks the next question, in one of those leaps considered inexplicable by the team. But for a moment, Daenerys had made sense of her, changed her from misunderstood and worried to someone who had found a kindred spirit.</p><p>“How do you feel about the murderers that you confront?”</p><p>The clinical distance with which she asks the question tells Arya that no, Daenerys has not done the job herself, not felt the spray of blood across her knife nor the intimacy that comes with asphyxiation, staring into their eyes as the life leaves them. But someone else <em>had</em>.</p><p>Arya grips the edge of the desk so hard that her knuckles whiten. “It’s like they, they <em>understand</em> me. I look into their eyes and I see me reflected in them. Do you see yourself, too?” she asks.</p><p>The scratching of Daenerys’s pen is the only thing that she hears for a long while. Finally: “I do.”</p><h3>FBI Academy, Red Keep, King’s Landing</h3><p>“So,” Dondarrion demands, more than asks, “what do you have for me?”</p><p>Daenerys straightens her jacket, unruffled. The air is cold around her bare ankles where her trousers end just above them, but she barely feels the cold.</p><p>“Due to doctor-patient confidentiality, which I have a reputation for never breaking, I am afraid I cannot reveal the particulars of our session.” She pushes a strand of hair out of her face, smiling benignly. Internally, however, vicious vindication runs through her at having annoyed Dondarrion. His face is turning <em>red</em>.</p><p>“But—I sent her to you on Arianne’s recommendation—but I thought you’d tell me—” His bluster is like wind, howling wildly and furiously, but in the end only air. And Daenerys is fire. She consumes air.</p><p>Her tone is perfectly cool and cordial as she responds, “I will not break doctor-patient confidentiality, Mr. Dondarrion. Particularly not if you continue in this fashion.”</p><p>“I need to figure her out,” he pleads, and Daenerys nearly laughs in his face. Arya Stark had been so utterly easy to figure out. Push in one place, and all of her walls fell down, like flicking a single domino and creating a chain reaction. Pieces knocking down pieces that knock down pieces. She has started the process and now it will continue, until she can finally figure out what, exactly, drives Arya Stark.</p><p>“All I have seen is that Stark is a perfect operative, above all concern. I will be instructing her in exercises to help her relax, but otherwise, I see no cause for concern in her.”</p><p>A lie. Of course. But she is not merely concerned for Arya Stark—no, Arya Stark is an experiment, a project, something to run and dissect the results of at the end.</p><p>She will never tell him that, though, so she simply smiles instead, the sharp point of her canine peeking out from under her red, red lipstick.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>subscribers say hi challenge</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>adventures in html: how is it working? is the fic formatting okay? please lmk how you find it!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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